1. Field of the Invention
This field is generally related to managing web information access.
2. Related Art
In many websites, there are multiple pages one wishes to view simultaneously.
However, at best the website will allow one to view them in separate tabs, which makes referring to, for example, a document while writing an e-mail much harder.
Terminology related to this problem includes buffer, window, and workspace. For example, a buffer may refer to an actual document. A window may refer to a view of a buffer. Multiple windows may offer views of a single buffer, each window providing access to a different portion of the buffer. However, it is important that there be a synchronization mechanism to coordinate editing a single buffer from multiple windows.
The collection of windows and buffers which are currently being operated on by the user are referred to as the workspace.
Offline programs, such as text editors, have developed ways to partition the screen that addresses the problem of referencing multiple documents simultaneously. For example, the UNIX text editor VIM provides a set of buffers, windows and tabs. The window can be split in any manner, allowing a user to view any set of buffers that is desired. However, in vim the tabs are not independent, in that there is a shared buffer list for the editor. Because of the shared buffer list, it slows down slightly the referring to buffers that are related to the current window. A buffer may be associated with multiple workspaces. Other offline programs may provide similar functionality in order to coordinate management of workspaces by handling buffers and views.
However, existing approaches have not provided for effective management of windows, buffers, and workspaces in web browsers by using the web browser feature of inline frames (i-frames). While certain browsers, such as Opera and Firefox, include the ability to manage views of documents, such as by tiling, existing approaches have not fully utilized the potential to manage windows, buffers, and workspaces by using the inline frames feature of HTML in order to manage content web pages in a master frame web page.